Contradictory Text & Illustration

It is fine to include this explanation before the text of the book. Illustration notes are not an automatic no-no, but they should be used sparingly and only when necessary. It is a little insulting to your reader to have things explained that they can imagine on their own. With your book, though, an explanation is certainly in order or the heart of your ms disappears.

BTW I think this sounds like fun. Kids love to be in on a joke.

In screenwriting there may be found the odd bit of (parenthetical) text inserted between the character's cue and their lines. This is nicknamed the wryly, as in the adverb, prompting the actor how to deliver their line.


In principle, the wryly should be employed sparingly to disambiguate who is being addressed, suggest delivery that is not obvious from context, contrast the delivery with established character traits, etc. In practice, many screenwriters overuse wrylies, and directors and actors pride themselves in ignoring wrylies and interpreting lines their way.

In movies and TV, dialogue and voiceovers (dialogue & prose) create humor, tension, suspense, and irony when they contrast with setting and action (illustration).

So in a PB, if it cannot reasonably be inferred from prose and dialogue that there must be visual elements that create humor, tension, suspense, and irony, by all means, add notes. Otherwise, one must either partner with an illustrator or become one.

I agree. Outline your intentions at the top of the manuscript, and the rest (i.e. the idea for each individual illustration) should be fairly intuitive for an experienced editor or agent.